Iggy Pop (/ˈɪɡipɑːp/; born James Newell Osterberg, Jr.; April 21, 1947) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actor. Osterberg became known as "Iggy" in high school, when he served as drummer for a local blues band, The Iguanas. He is vocalist of influential protopunk band The Stooges, who reunited in 2003,[1] and has been known for his outrageous and unpredictable stage antics.[2][3]

Once I hit junior high in Ann Arbor, I began going to school with the son of the president of Ford Motor Company, with kids of wealth and distinction. But I had a wealth that beat them all. I had the tremendous investment my parents made in me. I got a lot of care. They helped me explore anything I was interested in. This culminated in their evacuation from the master bedroom in the trailer, because that was the only room big enough for my drum kit. They gave me their bedroom.[8]

The seeds of Iggy Pop's stage persona were sown when he saw The Doors perform in 1967 at the University of Michigan and was amazed by the stage antics and antagonism displayed by singer Jim Morrison.[6] Morrison's extreme behavior, while performing in a popular band, inspired the young Pop to push the boundaries of stage performance. Other influences on Iggy Pop's vocals and persona were Mick Jagger and James Brown. Pop was the first performer to do a stage-dive, which he started at a concert in Detroit.[6] Pop also performed such stage theatrics as rolling around in broken glass, exposing himself to the crowd, and vomiting on stage.[6]

I attended two concerts by the Doors. The first one I attended was early on and they had not gotten their shit together yet. That show was a big, big, big influence on me. They had just had their big hit, “Light My Fire” and the album had taken off.[...] So, here’s this guy, out of his head on acid, dressed in leather with his hair all oiled and curled. The stage was tiny and it was really low. It got confrontational. I found it really interesting. I loved the performance [...] Part of me was like, 'Wow, this is great. He’s really pissing people off and he’s lurching around making these guys angry.' People were rushing the stage and Morrison’s going 'Fuck you. You blank, blank, blank.”' You can fill in your sexual comments yourself. The other half of it was that I thought, 'If they’ve got a hit record out and they can get away with this, then I have no fucking excuse not to get out on stage with my band.' It was sort of the case of, 'Hey, I can do that.' There really was some of that in there.[10]

In 1968, one year after their live debut and now dubbed The Stooges, the band signed with Elektra Records, again following in the footsteps of The Doors, who were Elektra's biggest act at the time (reportedly, Pop called Moe Howard to see if it was all right to call his band "The Stooges," to which Howard responded by merely saying "I don't care what they call themselves, as long as they're not the Three Stooges!" and hung up the phone). The Stooges' first two albums The Stooges, (on which Pop was credited as "Iggy Stooge"), produced by John Cale; and Fun House, sold poorly. Though the release of Fun House didn't receive the recognition it expected, it would later be ranked #191 in Rolling Stone's '500 Greatest Albums of All Time' in 2003.[11] Shortly after the new members joined, the group disbanded because of Pop's worsening heroin addiction.

In 1971, Iggy Pop and David Bowie met at Max's Kansas City, a nightclub and restaurant in New York City.[12] Pop's career received a boost from his relationship with Bowie when Bowie decided in 1972 to produce an album with Pop in England. With James Williamson signed on as guitarist, the search began for a rhythm section. However, since neither Pop nor Williamson was satisfied with any players in England, they decided to re-unite The Stooges. It would not be a true reunion insofar as Dave Alexander was unable to play on the record because of his chronic alcoholism (he died in 1975). Also, Ron Asheton grudgingly moved from guitar to bass to make way for Williamson to play guitar. The recording sessions produced the rock landmark Raw Power. After its release Scott Thurston was added to the band on keyboards/electric piano and Bowie continued his support, but Pop's drug problem persisted. The Stooges' last show ended in a fight between the band and a group of bikers, documented on the album Metallic K.O. Drug abuse stalled his career again for several years.

After the second breakup of The Stooges, Iggy Pop made some recordings with James Williamson, but these were not released until 1977 (as Kill City, credited jointly to Iggy Pop and Williamson). Pop was unable to control his drug use and checked himself into a mental institution, UCLA’s neuropsychiatric institute, to try to clean up. Bowie was one of his few visitors there, and he continued to support his friend and collaborator. In 1976, Bowie took him along as his companion on the Station to Station tour. This was Iggy Pop's first exposure to large-scale professional touring and he was impressed, particularly with Bowie's work rate.

Bowie and Pop relocated to West Berlin to wean themselves off their respective drug addictions. In 1977, Pop signed with RCA and Bowie helped write and produce The Idiot and Lust for Life, Pop's two most acclaimed albums as a solo artist, the latter featuring one of Pop's most known and renowned songs "The Passenger". Lust for Life also featured another team of brothers, Hunt and Tony Sales, sons of comedian Soupy Sales. Among the songs Bowie and Pop wrote together were "China Girl", "Tonight", and "Sister Midnight", all of which Bowie performed on his own albums later on (the last being recorded with different lyrics as "Red Money" on the album Lodger). Bowie also played keyboards in Pop's live performances, some of which are featured on the album TV Eye in 1978. In return, Pop contributed backing vocals on Bowie's Low.

Iggy Pop had grown dissatisfied with RCA, later admitting that he had made TV Eye as a quick way of fulfilling his three-album RCA contract. He moved to Arista Records, under whose banner he released New Values in 1979. This album was something of a Stooges reunion, with James Williamson producing and latter-day Stooge Scott Thurston playing guitar and keyboards. Not surprisingly, the album's style harkened back to the guitar sound of the Stooges. Although highly regarded by many Iggy fans (some preferring it to the Bowie collaborations), New Values was not a popular success.

Iggy Pop, Cardiff, 1979

The album was moderately successful in Australia and New Zealand, however, and this led to Iggy Pop's first visit there to promote it. While in Melbourne, he made a memorable appearance on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's nationwide pop show Countdown. During his anarchic performance of I'm Bored, Pop made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was lip-synching, and he even tried to grab the teenage girls in the audience. He was also interviewed by host Ian "Molly" Meldrum, an exchange which was frequently punctuated by the singer jumping up and down on his chair and making loud exclamations of "G'day mate" in a mock Australian accent. His Countdown appearance is generally considered one of the highlights of the show's history and it cemented his popularity with Australian punk fans; since then he has often toured there. While visiting New Zealand, Iggy Pop recorded a music video for "I'm Bored", and attended a record company function where he appeared to slap a woman and throw wine over a photographer.[13] While in Australia, Iggy Pop was also the guest on a live late-night commercial TV interview show on the Ten Network. It is not known whether a recording of this interview exists, but the famous Countdown appearance has often been re-screened in Australia.

During the recording of Soldier (1980), Iggy Pop and Williamson quarrelled over production (the latter apparently wanted a big, Phil Spector-type sound) and Williamson was fired. Bowie appeared on the song Play it Safe, performing backing vocals with the group Simple Minds. The album and its follow-up Party (1981) were both commercial failures, and Iggy Pop was dropped from Arista. His drug habit varied in intensity, but persisted.

In 1980, Iggy Pop published his autobiography I NEED MORE, co-written with Anne Weher, an Ann Arbor arts patron. The book, which includes a selection of black and white photographs, features a foreword by Andy Warhol. Warhol says that he met Iggy when he was Jim Osterberg, at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1966. "I don't know why he hasn't made it really big," wrote the one Pop artist about the other. "He is so good."

The 1982 album Zombie Birdhouse on Chris Stein's Animal label, with Stein himself producing, was no more commercially successful than his Arista works, but again, in 1983, Iggy Pop's fortunes changed when David Bowie recorded a cover of the song "China Girl". The song had originally appeared on The Idiot, and was a major hit on Bowie's blockbuster Let's Dance album. As co-writer of the song, Pop received substantial royalties. On Tonight in 1984, Bowie recorded two more of their co-written songs, this time from the Lust for Life album, "Tonight" and "Neighborhood Threat", assuring Iggy Pop financial security, at least for the short term. The support from Bowie enabled Pop to take a three-year break, during which he overcame his resurgent heroin addiction and took acting classes.

In 1985, the scene was set for a surge in Iggy Pop's fame with the popularity of the successful, critically acclaimed movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. Early in the film, the song "Lust for Life" plays on a character's radio. The new, mainstream exposure of Pop's music set the stage for the popularity of the underground Bohemian/New Wave scene of the early to mid-1980s New York City, which the film showcases.

In 1985, Pop recorded some demos with Jones. He played these demos for Bowie, who was sufficiently impressed to offer to produce an album for Pop: 1986's new wave-influenced Blah Blah Blah, featuring the single "Real Wild Child", a cover of "The Wild One", originally written and recorded by Australian rock 'n' roll pioneer Johnny O'Keefe in 1958. The single was a Top 10 hit in the UK and was successful around the world, especially in Australia, where for 20 years it has been used as the theme music for the ABC's late-night music video show Rage. Blah Blah Blah was Pop's highest-charting album in the U.S. since The Idiot in 1977, peaking at No. 75 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart.

Also in 1985, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed contributed their singing voices to the animated film Rock & Rule. Pop performed the song "Pain & Suffering" in the final sequence of the film.[14]

In 1987, Pop appeared (along with Bootsy Collins) on a mostly instrumental album, Neo Geo, by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, won the first ever MTV Breakthrough Video Award. The groundbreaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's ideas of Nostalgia for the Future in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting Puberty, and Roland BarthesDeath of the Author. The surrealist black-and-white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis recorded Sakamoto while at work on the score for The Last Emperor in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.

Pop's follow-up to Blah Blah Blah, Instinct (1988), was a turnaround in musical direction. Its stripped-back, guitar-based sound leaned further towards the sound of the Stooges than any of his solo albums to date. His record label dropped him, but the King Biscuit radio show recording of the Instinct tour (featuring guitarist Andy McCoy and Alvin Gibbs on bass) reaching Boston on July 19, 1988, remains one of punk-rock's most enduring live albums.[citation needed] Working with rock attorney Stann Findelle, Pop scored more movie soundtrack inclusions in 1989: "Living on the Edge of the Night" in the Ridley Scott thriller Black Rain; and "Love Transfusion", a song originally written by Alice Cooper (who does backing vocals) and Desmond Child,[15] in Wes Craven's Shocker.

In 1990, Pop recorded Brick by Brick, produced by Don Was, with members of Guns N' Roses and The B-52's as guests, as well as backup vocals by many local Hollywood groups, two of whom (Whitey Kirst and Craig Pike) would create his band to tour and perform on his Kiss My Blood video (1991), directed by Tim Pope and filmed at the Olympia in Paris. The video attracted much controversy, as it featured much footage of Pop performing with his penis exposed to the audience. The album was his first Gold-certified album in the U.S. (denoting sales of over 500,000 copies) and featured his first Top 40 U.S. hit, "Candy", a duet with B-52's singer Kate Pierson.

In 1991, Pop and Kirst contributed the song "Why Was I Born (Freddy's Dead)" to the soundtrack of the film Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. The song also plays over the end credits of the film, with a compilation of clips from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series running alongside the end credits. In the same year, Pop sang a leading role in the John Moran opera The Manson Family.

In 1996, Pop again found mainstream fame when his 1977 song "Lust for Life" was featured in the film Trainspotting. A new video was recorded for the song, with clips from the film and studio footage of Pop dancing with one of the film's stars, Ewen Bremner. An Iggy Pop concert also served as a plot point in the film. The song has also been used in TV commercials for Royal Caribbean and as the theme music to The Jim Rome Show, a nationally syndicated American sports talk show.

In 1996, Pop released Naughty Little Doggie, with Whitey Kirst returning on guitar, and the single "I Wanna Live". In 1997, he remixedRaw Power to give it a rougher, more hard-edged sound; fans had complained for years that Bowie's official "rescue effort" mix was muddy and lacking in bass. Pop testified in the reissue's liner notes that on the new mix, "everything's still in the red". He co-produced his 1999 album Avenue B with Don Was, releasing the single "Corruption". Pop produced 2001's Beat 'Em Up, which gave birth to The Trolls, releasing the single "Football" featuring Trolls alumni Whitey Kirst and brother Alex.

Pop's 2003 album Skull Ring featured collaborators Sum 41, Green Day, Peaches, and The Trolls, as well as Ron and Scott Asheton, reuniting the three surviving founding members of The Stooges for the first time since 1974. Pop made a guest appearance on Peaches's song Kick It as well as the video. Also in 2003, his first full-length biography was published. Gimme Danger – The Story of Iggy Pop was written by Joe Ambrose; Pop did not collaborate on the biography or publicly endorse it. Having enjoyed working with the Ashetons on Skull Ring, Pop reformed The Stooges with bassist Mike Watt (formerly of the Minutemen) filling in for the late Dave Alexander, and Fun House saxophonist Steve Mackay rejoining the lineup. They have toured regularly since 2004. That year, Pop opened Madonna's Reinvention World Tour in Dublin.

Iggy and The Stooges played the Glastonbury Festival in June 2007. Their set included material from the 2007 album The Weirdness and classics such as "No Fun and "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Pop also caused controversy in June 2007 when he was interviewed on the BBC's coverage of the Glastonbury Festival. He used the phrase "paki shop", apparently unaware of its racist connotations, prompting three complaints and an apology from the BBC.[16]

On March 10, 2008 Pop appeared at Madonna's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Together with The Stooges he sang raucous versions of two Madonna hits "Burning Up" and "Ray of Light." Before leaving the stage he looked directly at Madonna, quoting "You make me feel shiny and new, like a virgin, touched for the very first time.", from Madonna's hit song "Like A Virgin". According to guitarist Ron Asheton, Madonna asked The Stooges to perform in her place, as a protest to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for not inducting The Stooges despite six appearances on the nomination ballot.[17] Pop also sang on the "No Fun" cover by Asian Dub Foundation on their 2008 album Punkara.

On January 6, 2009, original Stooges guitarist, and Iggy's self-described best friend Ron Asheton, was found dead from an apparent heart attack. He was 60 years old.

On December 15, 2009 it was announced that The Stooges would be inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 15, 2010. Pop had "about two hours of a strong emotional reaction" to the news.[19]

In March 2010 the Stooges and Iggy Pop were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[20]

Pop supplied vocals for the 1999 Death in Vegas UK Top-10 single Aisha. The same year he appeared on Hashisheen, The End Of Law, a collaborative effort by Bill Laswell, reading on the tracks The Western Lands and A Quick Trip to Alamut. He also sang on the tracks "Rolodex Propaganda" and "Enfilade" by At the Drive-In in 2000.

For New Year's Eve 1997, Iggy was the headliner for the annual Australian three-day concert the Falls Festival. He gave one of the most memorable performances in the history of the festival. A member of the audience got to do the countdown for the new year with Pop as part of a competition to guess Pop's new year's resolution. (It was "To do nothing and make a lot of money!")

Pop's new solo album, Préliminaires, was released on June 2, 2009. Inspired by a novel by French author Michel Houellebecq called La Possibilité d'une île (2005; Trans. as The Possibility of an Island by Gavin Bowd, 2006), Iggy was approached to provide the soundtrack for a documentary film on Houellebcq and his attempts to make a film from his novel. He describes this new release as a "quieter album with some jazz overtones", the first single off the album, "King of the Dogs", bearing a sound strongly influenced by New Orleans jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Pop said that the song was his response to being "sick of listening to idiot thugs with guitars banging out crappy music". The album is available on legal download sites, CD, and a Deluxe Boxset is available at only 6000 units worldwide. This box set contains the Préliminaires album, a collector "Les Feuilles Mortes" b/w "King Of The Dogs" 7 inch, the cover of which is Pop's portrait by Marjane Satrapi, and a 38-page booklet of drawings also by Marjane Satrapi.

In January 2009, Iggy Pop was signed up as the face of Swiftcover, the UK-based online insurance company.[23] The advert was then banned by the Advertising Standards Authority on April 28, 2009 for being misleading – it implied that Iggy Pop himself had an insurance policy with Swiftcover when at the time the company did not insure musicians.[24]

Pop also sings on "We're All Gonna Die" on Slash's first solo album Slash, which was released in April 2010.[25] He appeared as a character in the video game Lego Rock Band to sing his song "The Passenger" and also lent his voice for the in game tutorial.[26] With reference to the song "The Passenger", Pop has appeared on NZ television advertising phone networks to show how he can get a band to play together by conference call.

After a March 2010 stage diving accident, Pop claimed he would no longer stage dive. However, he did so on three occasions at a concert in Madrid, Spain on April 30, 2010.[27] And it was much the same in London at the Hammersmith Apollo on May 2, 2010.[28] On July 9, 2010 he again stage dived in Zottegem, Belgium, causing Iggy to bleed from the face.[29] In June 2010, Pop appeared at Yonge and Dundas Square in Toronto with the reformed Stooges on the NXNE main stage. In 2011 he teamed up with The Lilies, a collaboration between Sergio Dias of Os Mutantes and French group Tahiti Boy & The Palmtree Family, to record the single "Why?".

Pop lent his image to PETA's campaign against the annual Canada seal hunt.[30]

On October 14, 2014, Pop gave the fourth annual BBC MusicJohn Peel Lecture in Salford, on the topic of "Free Music in a Capitalist Society".[34] He used the lecture to discuss his experiences of the music industry, and his reflections on the effect of the internet on the consumption of music and the broader media.[35] Iggy hosts a weekly radio show on BBC Radio 6.

Pop also voiced a cameo in the American Dad! episode "American Dream Factory" as Jerry, the drummer, in Steve Smith's band. He makes an appearance in FLicKeR, a 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine. Pop played himself as the DJ of the fictional rock station Liberty Rock Radio 97. 8 in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV. The Stooges song "I Wanna Be Your Dog" was featured on the same station. Iggy Pop also featured as a voice talent in the 2004 ATARI video game DRIV3R, which was produced by Reflections Interactive. Pop appears as a character in the Adult Swim animated comedy/adventure series The Venture Bros.. He is one of the bodyguards, along with Klaus Nomi, of David Bowie, who is "The Sovereign" of the League of Calamitous Intent. Pop has some unclear super-powers, which he uses when he and Nomi turn against Bowie.

The Passenger was the putative name for a biographical film about Pop's early career with the Stooges. The film was to be directed by Nick Gomez, and Elijah Wood was to play Iggy Pop.[37][38][39] As of 2010[update], the project appears to be shelved.[40]

The script ain't chopped liver... It was a work of art. But subjectively, I don't want to be involved in any way. A producer and the writer sent me a very decent letter, and asked me to write back if I didn't want them to do it... I don't feel negative about it at all.

In 1995, an established journal of classical scholarship, Classics Ireland, published Pop's reflections on the applicability of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to the modern world in a short article, Caesar Lives, (Vol. 2, 1995).[42] Pop also relates how reading Gibbon while on tour in the Southern United States inspired him to a spontaneous soliloquy he called "Caesar".

Pop lives near the Atlantic coast, south of Miami, Florida.[43] He has been married three times: to Wendy Weissberg (for several weeks in 1968, the marriage was annulled shortly thereafter),[citation needed] to Suchi Asano (1984–1999),[44] and most recently, he wed longtime sweetheart Nina Alu. He has a son, Eric Benson, born in 1970 to Paulette Benson.[45]

In the 1990s, Pop developed a friendship with Johnny Depp, Jim Jarmusch and tattoo artist Jonathan Shaw. According to Shaw, the four wore matching rings depicting a skull, and all but Pop received a similar skull-and-crossbones tattoo.[46]